A noun. A verb. A blog.
You might want to categorize this under “pets and diseases.” That first word isn’t a typo. Some disfiguring plant problems have nothing to do with bugs or fungi. Some “pests” are considerably larger. For example, if your lovely Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’) is supposed to look like this. And, instead, it looks like […]
As I admired the carpet of maple leaves in my yard (Norway maple leaves, she sighed resignedly), wondering if I had time to haul out my shredder, I noticed something. To be exact, I noticed something that wasn’t there. Can you see it? No tar spots. None. Not anywhere. We first wrote about the disfiguring fungal […]
Staghorn Fern at Allan Gardens, Toronto. You know how certain plants call to you, and others don’t? I’d always been a little wary of Staghorn Fern Platycerium Bifurcatum. There was something a little creepy and non-plantlike about them that left me a little cold, but I never forgot how much they appealed to my father, […]
These mottled leaves on my Clivia could be telling me a sad, sad story. Oh, dear. You might know of my constant quest for unkillable houseplants. When I find one purported to be Helenproof, I’m on it like bees (or Battersbys) on honey. How thrilled I was to hear about Clivia, an easy-to-care-for flowering bulb […]
We first posted this back in 2009, but 2011’s long, wet spring seems to have been perfect – many of our street trees seem spottier than ever. Here’s a repeat of our original post: Black tar spot of maples (Rhytisma acerinum) is one of the few excuses I can accept for sending your leaves off […]
The dark blue normal fruit of the serviceberry, along with one infected with Cedar apple rust It seems to be an OMG summer. Unusual things are happening after all the rain of spring 2011 – including a problem on my usually problem-free serviceberry (Amelanchier). OMG, what’s that? …was my reaction on seeing the intriguing spikes growing […]
The rather gross-looking cankers of Eastern filbert blight, a fungus that’s not a fun-guy! Run out right now and inspect your corkscrew hazel shrub (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) for bumps like these. If you see semi-regular, black cankers along the stems (like I did), your hazel has Eastern filbert blight (Anisogramma anomala). If left to its own […]
Take a close look at the mottled colour on this hosta leaf, a pattern known as inkbleed. It’s one of the first signs that a hosta has been infected by Hosta Virus X (HVX), for which there is no cure. Photos of other telltale symptoms of this disease – which has become a silent epidemic […]
Black tar spot of maples (Rhytisma acerinum) is one of the few excuses I can accept for sending your leaves off in the yard waste truck. Toronto gardeners have likely noticed this unsightly fungal disease over the past few years. It manifests as dime- or quarter-sized black spots on leaves, hitting many kinds of maple […]
Walking by Ted Reeve Arena on Gerrard Street East at Main, I spied what looked like dried black leaves persisting on some of the ornamental trees. Turns out, it wasn’t leaves on the branches, but hundreds of thick, black growths; perhaps some kind of fungus. Google came to my aid back at the ranch, and […]